Letters of a Reticent Master
Reilly, Joseph J.
462 THE COMMONWEAL March 3, 1926 LETTERS OF A RETICENT MASTER By JOSEPH J. REILLY ALTHOUGH more than one of his contemporaries achieved the distinction, Newman has * never been accounted...
...Sympathetic and deeply sincere as he was, never once in all his long years, and through the mazes of a huge correspondence with men and women of every variety of mind, did he strike a false note...
...now to an old friend who seeks literary guidance...
...now to a child...
...and their relations to one another, despite differences of time, place, and personality, are infinitely closer than they could ever be to John Henry Newman...
...Their correspondence is filled with sidelights on their contemporaries, discussions on literature, the progress of their personal affairs, a dinner-party, a reconciliation, a projected new book, the spice of gossip and anecdote, and those intimate portraits of friends and foes, appareled to the life, that make dead yesterdays live...
...own soul...
...for they are too busy with those things that escape the eye...
...Few things show Newman's keenness for the past, his pathetic cherishing of old memories, his abiding love of his friends, and his craving for affection as strikingly as his letters to Copeland at this period...
...the whimsical Lamb, the dynamic Carlyle, the ebullient Thackeray, the intimate Fitzgerald...
...now to a man of the world who is groping for religious light...
...His skill in varying his tone could be made to suit his own inclination no less than his correspondent's type of mind...
...Newman cherished anniversaries with a kind of passion which deepened with the years...
...The distinction of a perfect style and the genius of a spiritual leader—great qualities, indeed—brighten his notes to others...
...and that judgment has been reechoed many times since by innumerable voices...
...Newman continues to be insistent: uThere is no alternative between Catholicism and infidelity to the clear thinker— flee Babylon while you can...
...Death did not terrify him...
...In the autumn of 1849 rumor had it that Wilberforce was on the threshold of conversion...
...Newman never "jumped with the crowd...
...Men drop as on a battlefield...
...These letters do really trace a priceless picture of the mind and heart of a man so many-sided, so endowed with spiritual vision, so abidingly conscious of that Other Presence, that he belongs to the high company of the rarest souls in all time...
...All this, however, is not to say that Newman was hardly a great letter-writer...
...and the fact that they are saturated, like the Apologia, with the personality of Newman, makes them peculiarly precious...
...and his letters vary widely in tone as he writes, now to a nun who has lost her beloved superior...
...But, none the less, he is pervadingly present, tender, thoughtful, patient, gracious, tactful, keen, eager to serve, mentally inexhaustible, and on occasion, when meekness has ceased to be a virtue, accusive, ironic, crushingly frank...
...His letters, unlike theirs, rarely mirror the details of his confined circle or portray the celebrities who enter it...
...now to one of those fortunate few, dear as life itself, to whom he could pay such exquisite tribute, in prose like music, as brought the Apologia to a close...
...Hutton never entered the Church, but he did not lose Newman's esteem any more than Keble, Copeland, Dean Church, or Lord Blachford, those beloved friends of Oxford days who remained in the Anglican communion...
...They are in the world and of the world...
...You could not be kinder to me," he writes, "than you are in telling me that persons whom I love have not forgotten me...
...Here is a Christmas letter written when Newman was seventyone: My dear Mr...
...but I can't help writing...
...Again, when conversion appears to be merely a matter of time: "O, the joy it will be to me to see you and embrace you as the patriarch turned himself with yearning to his lost son...
...But the fact is, that this man, who in his teens walked with God and felt himself ever in His presence, found that the serious business of life pressed constantly on his attention, and left little time for purely social interests...
...People are carried off so unexpectedly...
...Among Newman's dearest friends of Oxford days was W. J. Copeland, his curate at Littlemore, and the editor of his sermons...
...Among the eminent Victorians whose association with Newman was slight but who felt, afar off, the spell of his personality, none inspired a more affectionate confidence than Richard Holt Hutton...
...I cannot feel so hopefully and tenderly to many of those whom you defend or patronize as I do to you—and what you write perplexes me often—but when a man is really and truly seeking the pearl of great price, how can one help joining oneself in heart and spirit with him...
...There was Sir Robert Throckmorton last week, a heartylooking man, younger than I—and he is gone...
...There are many things as to which I most seriously differ from you, but I believe you to be one of those to whom the angels on Christmas night send greetings as "hominibus bonae voluntatis," and it is a pleasure and a duty for all who would be their companions hereafter to follow their pattern of comprehensive charity here...
...But the change did not come for months...
...When he fears that Copeland is not careful enough of his health he chides him gently, adding: "I want you to live many years, and never, never again to be so cruel to me as you were for nearly seventeen long years...
...How do I know that I shall ever see you again, if you don't come now...
...rather, he thought of it with a certain awe, as of a veil behind which lies the answer to great mysteries...
...Newman's interest in seekers for religious truth did not end with his Lectures to Anglicans...
...O my dearest H. W., may not this be a crisis in your eternal destiny...
...Intellect, character, and the editorship of The Spectator united to give him a commanding position, and in the early days of the Kingsley-Newman duel, when public opinion trembled in the balance, it was the weight of his influence which inclined it to Newman...
...he was too completely the individualist for that, with an awareness of himself and of God such as few men have ever equaled or even understood...
...The Oratorian wrote to express his gratitude, and a friendship followed marked by mutual appreciation, both personal and intellectual, and a delicate candor that spoke eloquently for both men...
...With such an insistent sense of the preciousness of time, it is no wonder that Newman is not a great letter-writer in the same way as Horace Walpole, the gossip...
...Every day had a significance of its own which he recorded faithfully in his letters—his Oriel fellowship, his conversion, the beginning of the Oxford Movement, a friend's birthday, the death of Walter Scott, and countless others...
...Copeland must come to see him at the Oratory...
...How can you delay...
...462 THE COMMONWEAL March 3, 1926 LETTERS OF A RETICENT MASTER By JOSEPH J. REILLY ALTHOUGH more than one of his contemporaries achieved the distinction, Newman has * never been accounted a great letter writer...
...Do not let anything stand between conviction and its legitimate consequence.' Carissime, you must die some day or other...
...Newman wrote: "Carissime:— I have heard something about you this morning, which makes me say: 'Send for me and I will come to you at once—by return of post...
...After an interval of seventeen years they chanced to meet and at once the memories of the wonder-time when all Oxford was at Newman's feet and the friendships of the Tractarian brotherhood glowed with the ardor of their great crusade, awakened to poignant life again...
...And always the world of shadows in which we live snares us within its petty round of irritating concerns and duties, and we ignore that other world, the realities of which should be the object of our dear desires...
...It is not that he cannot unbend, for he can do that delightfully when he wishes...
...His correspondence was enormous, but it was largely with men and women who had moral problems to solve, or doubts or besetting difficulties, or who were allies or foes in some of the momentous matters with which his life was concerned—the Tractarian Movement, his conversion, the Irish University, the Rambler, the establishment of a branch of the Oratory at Oxford, the Kingsley affair, the definition of infallibility...
...Doubts or difficulties had only to be honest to touch his heart, and in the voluminous correspondence he carried on with men and women who sought his guidance, insight, March 3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 463 patience* and tenderness were mingled with an exquisite tact...
...But when the promised visit was put off Newman wrote in remonstrance and the eager insistence of his letter betrays how deeply his emotions were stirred: Now you are not going to disappoint me...
...For years one of his highest hopes centered in the conversion of Henry Wilberforce, to whom he wrote some of his most insistent letters on the claims of the Catholic Church...
...To him the longest life seemed short, because there is so much that He exacts of us and the night cometh swiftly...
...When in 1857 he resolved to resign the rectorship of the University at Dublin he wrote letters to the members of the hierarchy of Ireland "carefully graduated in cordiality of expres$ion," and to read them is to see Newman from many angles, his punctilious courtesy, his appreciation of kindness, and his abiding respect for his superiors even when resentment of their failure to support his policies seemed warranted...
...That joy was not delayed much longer, and early in 1850 Henry Wilberforce and his wife were received into the Church...
...But with Newman it is different...
...it is not that he is lacking in humor, for his rare smile is a joy to see...
...Most truly yours, John H. Newman...
...Thackeray, Carlyle, Edward Fitzgerald, Stevenson— these admit you to the sanctuary of intimacy, there to see them at their ease, and to share with them their slippered leisure and their unguarded moments...
...It is not that he wears his heart upon his sleeve, for, except in the rarest instances, he restrains his moods, checks the expression of his emotions, and yields his ultimate confidences only to his...
...Two days later he wrote again: "Carissime:— This may cross one of yours...
...Gifted with the keenest intuitive judgment of character, Newman never failed to sense his correspondent's thought or appreciate his type of mind...
...You always understand everything," his sister had said to him when, in childhood, he had dried her tears...
...Gray, the pensive portrayer of minor doings...
...Hutton:—I have nothing to write to you about, but I am led at this season to send you the religious greetings and good wishes which it suggests, to assure you that, though I seem to be careless about those who desire truths, yet I do really sympathize with them very much, and ever have them in mind...
...Except Ambrose Saint John, I have not spoken to anyone so near to my heart and memory as you are for nearly seventeen years—and you are going to deny me what you promised...
...Verily, this is the voice of Newman, not Newman the controversialist, the educator, the guide of perplexed souls, the spiritual prophet, the great writer, but Newman the man, whose capacity for friendship was boundless, who could be as tender as a woman, and who often sought in memory and the affection of friends a sanctuary from such misunderstanding and loneliness as are the portion of Eve's noblest children...
...I know how honestly you try to approve yourself to God, and this is a claim on the reverence of anyone who knows or reads you...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 17
